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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28597245">be my ibuprofen</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggierachael/pseuds/maggierachael'>maggierachael</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>grade school games [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Narcos (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 03, a lovely welcome into 2021 featuring my sweet trauma filled babies, aka this entire fic is an excuse for javi to get the hug he deserves, all cory wants to do is protect her boy from the world, i've said it before and i'll repeat it again:, javier pena is TIRED and deserves to REST, sir you can't date an elementary school teacher and expect to be able to hide your feelings, this woman's known you for twenty years come on now</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:20:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,947</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28597245</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggierachael/pseuds/maggierachael</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"You okay?"</p>
<p>"Nightmares. 'S fine."</p>
<p>"Not fine," she said. "Should've woken me."</p>
<p>She thought she heard him chuckle at that, an ugly, rueful sound that didn’t sound right coming out of his mouth. It sounded off, a record put back in the wrong sleeve and left to rot. The real Javi sounded far away, this version of him just an echo chamber of everything brought to the surface in the night. Everything dug up by the silence. The lack of stimulation. The lack of her. </p>
<p>Or: Cory wakes in the middle of the night, and Javi gets the closure he deserves.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Javier Peña/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>grade school games [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639453</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>be my ibuprofen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My god, I thought, my whole life I’ve been<br/>under her raincoat thinking it was<br/>somehow a marvel that I never got wet.    </p>
<p>-“The Raincoat”, Ada Limón</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It was the shuffling in the kitchen that woke Cory that night. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not that she’d ever been a heavy sleeper, but she usually had no problem sleeping through the night. She lived in the middle of nowhere, secluded as much as rural Texas could be and surrounded on all sides by unintrusive grazing land. There were no neighbors to wake her, no cars coming down a main road by her window. She slept long hours to keep up with her handfuls of kids, and she’d never been one to keep animals around the house. For the most part, the middle of the night was a mystery to her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Until her partner had moved in.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She could see the hall light on before she’d even moved, and she sighed. The digital clock blinked 3:53 on their nightstand when she checked; he’d been asleep for the better part of six hours. Had she not vividly remembered her best friend climbing in next to her, she might have grabbed the bat she kept under the bed - the one he’d bought for her, red-rimmed and heavy before he’d gone off to Colombia. Even then, she triple-checked in her head that she’d locked all the doors before getting out of bed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>An October moon stood vigil in the window as she padded out of the room, the inevitable heat of Texas still pressing down despite the lateness of the year. She was sweating in her sleep shorts, bare feet sticking to the tile that she’d made promises to remove when she’d moved in. If she’d been going for stealth, she wasn’t winning any points for it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She found Javier standing at the counter with his back to her. His hands were braced on either side of what looked like coffee mid-press, but he didn’t seem to be interested in it. His head hung to his chest, defeated, and she could see where his eyes were squeezed shut. Bracing against a pain Cory couldn’t possibly know. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You okay?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her words felt like cannon fire in the quiet of the night. They bounced off the cheap linoleum tile, shots gone wide as they echoed against the dead quiet of her home. Javi was still shirtless, and she could see where his muscles tensed when she asked him. They bunched up, softened by age and retirement ruining his muscle definition, but Cory could see it all the same. Could feel his shock, palpable in the lonely silence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nightmares.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The word was clipped, sawed down to the bare essentials. Tired, like he couldn’t manage anymore than he absolutely had to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“‘S fine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not in Cory’s book.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’d had these before, the night terrors. They were inevitable, really, given what had happened to him. Who he’d worked for. What he’d seen. They were a brand, a mark left by a life that didn’t want to leave him behind. A life Cory had fought to leave at the door, no matter how much it kicked and screamed and ruined her welcome mat. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d tried to watch for them. Made sure he was getting enough sleep. Avoided letting him smoke before bed. She’d let him move in, claim her space as his own so she could claim his pain in return. From the moment they’d met, she’d known there was nothing worse in the world than seeing Javier in pain. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But the demons were tricky. They snuck in while her back was turned, while she was distracted by overdue grades or the heat or the sheer euphoria of sharing a life with her best friend. They crept in the windows, under the crack of the back door. They hung on Javi’s back, off his clothes and his hair and joins he hadn’t managed to repair since he’d come back for good. They got in, no matter how hard Cory tried, and it hurt her. Nearly as much as it hurt him.   </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not fine,” she said. Her voice felt tight in her throat. “Should’ve woken me.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Javi’s head shook, eyes open now but still facing the floor. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Y’ve got school in the morning.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cory scoffed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck school.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She thought she heard him chuckle at that, an ugly, rueful sound that didn’t sound right coming out of his mouth. It sounded off, a record put back in the wrong sleeve and left to rot. The real Javi sounded far away, this version of him just an echo chamber of everything brought to the surface in the night. Everything dug up by the silence. The lack of stimulation. The lack of her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She could never understand, but no one deserved to be alone in their own head. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wordlessly, she padded forward, the slow slip of her feet on the floor the only sound as she crossed to her partner, through the broom closet she called a kitchen until she could wrap her arms securely around his middle. Her forehead came to rest on his back, and she could feel him sigh as she settled in to comfort him. His skin was hot, much the same way hers was, and she could see where the blankets of their shared bed had left dents in his arms. Red welts running the length of his biceps, a replacement for the tattoos he said he’d never get. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was disgusting in the heat of the Texas night, the way she pressed the two of them together, but she didn’t care. They could shower in the morning. He needed someone now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you wanna talk about it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She whispered it into his shoulder blades, almost too quiet over the sound of the fan running in the corner. She could feel his breath where her hands touched his stomach. Shallow. Coarse. His lungs coated in sandpaper. He was tense all over, a bombshell left to detonate. She’d stay tucked behind him all night if she had to. All year, if it meant defusing whatever was going on inside his head.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He said nothing for a long moment. Cory listened to him breathe, the shallow gasps mellowing out the longer she stayed, the longer she swayed the two of them back and forth. She swayed until she felt him move, still-tense muscles shifting under the press of her against his back</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His hands, so much larger than hers, gripped her wrists and pulled them away, and she wanted to protest. Wanted to tell him nothing good would come of pushing her away. She clung as much as she could, but it was useless, bare feet squeaking like gunshot on the tile as he spun her around like a useless corner store top. Her arms flailed, and she spun, moving until she was against the counter, until her back pressed firmly against the drawer where she kept the knives. Javier connected his forehead with hers, and now she understood what he’d done. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was graceful, for all that Javi looked like he wanted to fall apart.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His hands fell to her hips, and he fidgeted them between his hands - tugging them back and forth absentmindedly, the way he always did when his head was somewhere else. Somewhere far away, where laws and order and love don’t exist, and he’s just another man. Another body, her Javi hollowed out and fitted with a tactical vest to hide the scars. Sent off without rhyme or reason, returned to loved ones with wounds more deadly than any kind of battle scar.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thought I’d lost you.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His words were as quiet as hers, no more than breaths felt against her temple - but they might as well have been insults, for all the way her heart reacted. Whether he’d dreamt of leaving or something worse, she couldn’t be sure, but her breath caught in her throat and her stomach did somersaults anyway. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m right here,” she muttered, worried her own panic would seep through in her voice. “I’m fine.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She eased her hands around his waist, and his head fell like a leaden weight to her shoulder. He kissed her neck and she let him, her heart slowly ballooning  with grief in her chest. He spoke in fractured sentences, pieces of a puzzle with half the box missing. It was a problem Cory could never solve, chemistry she didn’t have the kind of knowledge for. Javier was full of stories she’d never know, wounds she’d never be able to heal. She desperately wanted to - wanted to be the space for him to heal, the person to tell when his head felt wrong. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You want coffee?” she asked softly. “Wanna go back to bed?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His hands continued to fidget with her hips, his thumbs brushing against the edge of her sleep shorts now. His breath fanned out against her collarbone, and it didn’t go unnoticed the way he pressed her just that much farther into the countertop. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Want you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One hand slid to her back, crawling lower in an expedition towards distraction, and Cory’s muscles froze. One hand slipped from his waist to press against his chest, heel to sternum, and she sighed as she put a modicum of space between she and her partner despite every instinct that told her to cling on. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Uh-uh.” She was no Casanova, but she knew where this was going. “We are not drowning our feelings in sex, Javier Peña.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Javi shook his head, still drowning in the skin between her neck and her shirt collar. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not drowning anything.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bullshit.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She pushed harder, and the sudden absence of weight against her felt like a chasm in her chest. But it was for the best, gauging by the hollow, exhausted expression on Javi’s face when he stood back upright. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looked like a shadow of a man, a half-cast puppeteered by someone far beyond the reaches of their tiny home. His face was shadowed, even in the ugly, blinding light of the fluorescents above them, and she could suddenly see every year, every month, every day of what had happened to him when he’d been so far away from her arms. Every bullet hole, every failed operation, every sleepless night stringing himself out until he was a broken imitation of his former self. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looked half-dead, and it scared her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You had a nightmare, Javi.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She smoothed her hands against his chest, in some type of vain attempt at putting some of the life in her veins back into his. Some Earth mother, skin-to-skin connection kind of bullshit that a desperate part of her hoped would work. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not going to sleep with you and pretend like that didn’t happen.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She shook her head, fighting back tears at the way her partner’s shoulders sagged as she spoke - like all the air had been drained out of him into a vacuum. She was not going to be another sleepless night, another bandaid over a gaping wound acting like everything was okay. He wasn’t her student; this wasn’t just a monster in the closet. No, these monsters were real. And they lived everywhere but in his head. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t get this far as your best friend by ignoring what’s going on,” she said. “I’m not about to do it as your girlfriend, either.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She could’ve chucked a grenade against the tile, for all the good her words did. Javier’s eyes widened, brown eyes consumed by visions of something intangible, and his muscles stilled under her hands. She was sure her expression matched his, laced with fear at watching the man she knew disappear, replaced by someone else wearing his face. Someone different, a hastily made version of him with the stuffing still showing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cory feared he was seconds from flying apart at the seams.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re doing that now? Girlfriend?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His voice could’ve been a whisper on the wind - or the fan current pulsing from the corner. Cory sighed. Somewhere between Bogota and here, the Javi she knew had changed. Morphed from the loud, precocious kid who backseat drove in her shitty pickup to this quiet, brooding man. The king of deflection. Was that something they taught you in DEA training? How to bottle yourself up, pretend feelings are nothing more than a pretense for liability? Or was that something that happened with experience? Did being undercover, dealing with lies and bullshit and betrayal teach you to ignore your own heart? Even in front of the ones you loved?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re ignoring my point, baby.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She tapped her fingers against his chest, an impulse to silence the part of her that wanted to move them to his shoulders and shake, get him to see what was standing right in front of him. The childish part that was still upset with him for leaving her all alone to go and risk his life. The part of her that had been in love with him for the better part of both of their lives. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But she was a teacher. She knew how to quiet unruly desires. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Javi, on the other hand…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She could see him fidget as she felt it under her hands, that way he moved when he’d rather be anywhere else but in his current situation. The halo around the back of his head rippled, a flickering fluorescent spotlight as he realized he couldn’t run from Cory’s point. He couldn’t run from the person who knew him best. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The halo continued to morph as he shifted his weight, swaying back and forth, a closer approximation to an angel than any illustration at the Met could ever give. Shifting eyes, uncertain features, a host of characteristics that scared Cory directly to the bone the longer he remained silent. All of them stared back at her in silence, a perfect mask of panic as he brought his hands to rest over hers, tugging the same way he did whenever she’d seen him wear his tac vest. Her hands pressed into his skin, and she could feel him burning up - a sacrificial phoenix for those who couldn’t bear the heat for themselves. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, really.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stubborn, stubborn boy. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His voice was blue, the soundtrack to some inner turmoil that she didn’t have the technology to hear. It warped and coiled around her arms, freezing them in place - a fucked up, half-finished art sculpture, a broken piece pulled out of a too-hot kiln. An installation on the dangers of letting those you love out of sight. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But what happens when someone comes back changed? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course I’m your girlfriend, Javi.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She laced her fingers in between his, locking them together - proof that this wasn’t a mistake, wasn’t just some pent up excitement born of having each other back in their lives. ‘Girlfriend’ seemed an inappropriate word for how she felt, but it was the closest she had. There wasn’t a word for the man she knew practically better than herself. It was just a feeling: the way she still felt like all the air had been sucked from her lungs every time she saw him upset, the ridiculous way her chest ached when she saw him smile and the ugly laugh only he could bring out of her. No, ‘girlfriend’ didn’t cover it. But it was enough for now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You afraid I’m going to run off on you or something?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d meant it as a joke, a way to relieve some of the pressure sitting on his chest. Pull the elephant out of the room and banish it to the pastures out beyond her yard. He’d have to chase her off with a broom if he wanted rid of her; if either of them was going to leave, she sure as hell wouldn’t be going first. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But then Javi’s face crumbled - just the tiniest bit - and she instantly regretted it.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, honey.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His weight collapsed into her, and she wanted to cry. Wanted to hurt whoever had made him think that he didn’t deserve her. Didn’t deserve happiness. She wanted to rage against the hurricane in his head, the bad seeds planted in a garden he’d never intended to sow. His weight pressed her into the edge of the kitchen counter, and she did cry. For all the things she’d never said to make him think she’d run away. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She knew her Javi. She knew the sweet boy that had taken her to prom, that had defended her and cared for her and gave her the space to be herself. She knew that he’d been there for her, and that she would be there too, covered in juice stains and glitter glue though she may. She knew what he deserved, all of what he’d given her and more. She might not be able to give it, but she didn’t care. He’d chosen her. She’d serve from a million empty cups if she had to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The world had taken so much from him, but it wouldn’t take her. Not if she could help it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I told you. You’re not going to lose me.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her voice came out a croak, a squeal hydroplaning over the tears that tracked down her face. She ran a hand through Javi’s hair, feeling his hands anchor around her waist until that hand was all she could move. His head rested against her shoulder, and she’d hold him there until her limbs seized up if it meant getting him to believe her. She held him like they’d shatter into pieces if she let go - and if she was being honest, she wasn’t entirely sure they wouldn’t. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I love you.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d said it before, sure. But not when they shared the same bed. Not when they were more than just old friends. Not when she was completely convinced that he was the only person who would ever have access to her heart. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And she would rather lock it up and throw away the key than ever let anyone else in again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I love you, you hear me? Whatever you saw, whatever you did, I still love you. I’m not going to think any less of you for what happened.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She nudged Javi away from her, enough that he could see she’d rather jump off a bridge than joke about this. She chased eye contact, keeping a comforting hand at the back of his neck as she met what might have been the unsteadiest gaze she’d ever seen from her best friend. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Despite that, though, she saw him nod. Saw him square his jaw and pull himself together - at least enough to get a few words out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I love you too.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His voice was as cracked as hers. They were pottery shards littering an unswept floor, the debris of long lives that had yet to be pieced back together. They were “too old” for this kind of fragility, outdated car parts that somehow made the engine rev anyway, standards be damned. Vulnerability wasn’t something adults did, and yet there they were, tear-stained and standing in a kitchen that desperately needed a remodel. Clutching onto each other like the twenty-year-old tile would crumble beneath them if they let go. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As painful as it was, Cory didn’t want to be anywhere else. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t want…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He trailed off, and she could see traces of indecision lace his gaze like barbed wire. She knew he wanted to protect her. Wanted to keep the big, wide world away from his girl, out of her life where it could scratch and snarl and do the same things to her that it had done to him. That’s who he’d always been - the heart of gold bodyguard, the boy who walked her to her airplane gate and fistfought ex-boyfriends if they dared say anything about her. Cory was capable, but that’s who he was: the one who fought tooth and nail to keep others happy. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But someone deserved to protect him too. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“To scare me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>J</span>
  <span>avi didn’t need to nod for Cory to know she was right. Part of her heart ached at it, at the idea that he saw himself as some kind of monster. That he thought himself the Beast to her Belle, locking parts of himself away in a West Wing of his own making. The only thing that had ever scared her was the idea that he might not come home - and perhaps, that part of her mourned for the parts that didn’t. That were stuck in some </span>
  <em>
    <span>comuna</span>
  </em>
  <span>, running round and round in circles in an infinite, nightmare-inducing loop. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Another part of her was angry - an irrational anger that seeped down into her bones, polluting her tears with rage at something she didn’t have the means to fight. Part of her wanted to smack him, to remind of just what they’d been through together - the heartache and the turmoil, the blatantly ignored curfews, the getting lost at 1AM on Texas backroads and drinking until their brains were nothing more than useless, sappy mush on the outskirts of his father’s property. She wanted to bring back the Javi she knew, separate this one from him and shove it into the goddamn, no good, bloodsucking DEA’s faces and show them what they’d done to him. What crimes they’d committed. She wanted to scream at the fact that it had come to this, that Javier felt so broken that he needed to keep himself from her. From the person he’d known longer than anyone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was no more broken than she was, and he deserved to know it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You took me to </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Exorcist</span>
  </em>
  <span> and I laughed, Javi.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One of her hands came up to cradle his face, and when that wasn’t enough, the other one joined it. She tracked her thumbs over his cheekbones, over the evidence that he’d cried into her shoulder, despite the fact that he’d never admit to it. She tracked them down his jaw, over every surface like she wanted to memorize it. Memorize this corpse of a man so he’d never have to feel this way again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I deal with children throwing tantrums every day,” she said. “Whatever’s in your head - yes, it might scare me. It might make me cry. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with you. </span>
  <em>
    <span>All</span>
  </em>
  <span> of you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She sniffled, an ugly, deeply unattractive sound, but the ghost of a smile haunted Javi’s face anyway. A brief shadow in the windows of his eyes - an indication that the boy she loved had heard her, over all the memories and the noise and the cotton that the DEA had stuffed between his ears. Her Javi was still there, and he’d heard her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She held his face - her entire world, really - between her hands, and she smiled. As much as she could muster.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You cannot hold this in anymore, baby,” she whispered. “You can’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She didn’t dare say anything more, but she knew she didn’t need to. She knew when Javi brought his hands up to hers, knew in the way that he froze there, looking at her like she’d just pulled his heart from his chest, bandaged it, and it put it back in one piece. She’d tried to, at least; salve the burns and the scars as much as she could, and promised to be there for the healing, to be the healing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t need to say anything either. She knew he'd heard her. Knew it would take time, for him to open up and re-tear old wounds, rebreak bones so they could heal in one place. Everything takes time, time beyond the frozen moment they shared, beyond the 4AM dreariness and the pillow lines creased into their faces. To heal a wound was not an easy task. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But they’d waited a lifetime. A few more days, they could take.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Didn't think I'd ever get back to these two, but clearly 2021 is starting off with a whole host of feels, so here we are. </p>
<p>(title inspired by "ibuprofen" by bears in trees. catch me at <a href="https://ellariasand.tumblr.com/">ellariasand</a> on tumblr for more mushy nonsense!)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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